Lady Patriots Ready To Put A Bat On The Ball In Season-Opener Thursday Versus Cloverdale

by Amanda York

Staff Writer

Members of the 2012 varsity softball team at Owen Valley High School include, front row, left to right: Taylor Elliott, Emily Wood, Kasandra Ooley, Codi Stout, Allisa Polley, Beth Mauder, Ashley Wood and Katrina Dayhuff. Back row: head coach Jamie Summerlot, student-manager Kalie Shaffer, Kayla Richardson, Madison Summerlot, Rebecca Strong, Kendall Arnold, coach Rosanne Ruble and volunteer coach Alissa Heaslet. (Staff Photo) The Owen Valley Lady Patriots, with coach Jamie Summerlot at the helm for her second year, are ready to get their 2012 softball campaign underway. Working tirelessly since the end of the winter sports season, both the varsity and junior varsity squads are ready for competition.

“We are very excited to get this season started,” coach Summerlot said. “We have a lot of strong players coming back this year. However, we also have a lot of new girls, including seven freshman between the varsity and junior varsity squads and a few new sophomores and juniors came out for the team. This has allowed us to have a junior varsity team this year and we are very excited about that. We need a JV team in place to build the varsity program. Having the Owen Valley Middle School teams competing in Terre Haute the last four years have really helped to feed the program.”

“We have high expectations for this season,” coach Summerlot continued. “We had some pretty big shoes to fill this year after losing last year’s seniors. We are relying heavily on our returning players and pushing the underclassmen pretty hard to get them to where they need to be. There has been a lot of work correcting offensive issues from last year and we are always working to make our defense stronger. We have a strong program and we need to consistently have a winning mentality and confidence in each other.”

Weather permitting, Owen Valley will get a chance to test out their corrective measures and gauge just where both the varsity and junior varsity teams are when they host Cloverdale tonight, Thursday. Varsity game time is set for 5:00 p.m., with the junior varsity match-up to follow.